Biographie

1897–1994

Born in Bel­gium into a bour­geois fam­i­ly, Paul Del­vaux start­ed train­ing as an archi­tect at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Brus­sels in 1916.
Soon, Del­vaux turned to paint­ing which he explored under the influ­ence of his teacher, mas­ter of Sym­bol­ism Jean Delville; he also met René Magritte, with whom he main­tained a friend­ly rela­tion­ship through­out his life­time. Dur­ing the 1920s, Del­vaux worked in a style which can be defined as a Post-Impres­sion­ist inter­pre­ta­tion of Expres­sion­ism. Dur­ing the late 1920s his works fea­tured nudes in land­scapes heav­i­ly influ­enced by the two major expo­nents of Flem­ish Expres­sion­ism Con­stant Per­me­ke and Gus­tave De Smet. In his quest for per­fec­tion, Del­vaux was often dis­sat­is­fied and destroyed many of these paintings.

Dur­ing 1933, Del­vaux under­went a change of style, reflect­ing the influ­ence of the Meta­phys­i­cal Paint­ing of Gior­gio de Chiri­co, whose work he was aware of since 1927. When he saw de Chirico’s work at the Sur­re­al­ist exhi­bi­tion held at the leg­endary gallery ‘Le Mino­tau­re’ in 1934, Del­vaux decid­ed to ‘paint poet­ry’ and adhered to Sur­re­al­ism. The works ‘Palais en ruine’ and ‘Le Rêve’, both dat­ed 1935, are con­sid­ered his first Sur­re­al­ist works. His series ‘Femmes en den­telle’ con­firmed his cho­sen direc­tion. With­out ever offi­cial­ly belong­ing to the Sur­re­al­ist move­ment, Paul Del­vaux is con­sid­ered one of its major fig­ures. In 1938, his works were pre­sent­ed in Paris at the land­mark ‘Expo­si­tion Inter­na­tionale du Sur­réal­isme’ organ­ised by André Bre­ton and Paul Élu­ard. Where­as his com­pa­tri­ot René Magritte depict­ed ideas, Del­vaux remained sin­gu­lar in his fond­ness for nar­ra­tion and the the­atri­cal, hall­marks of Symbolism.
His works depict antique ruins, imag­i­nary archi­tec­tur­al con­struc­tions or con­tem­po­rary city struc­tures against desert­ed and mys­te­ri­ous land­scapes haunt­ed by inac­ces­si­ble female figures.
The skele­tons he saw at the Brus­sels Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry made an appear­ance in many of his paint­ings and con­tributed to cre­ate a strange and fan­tas­tic universe.
Dur­ing the 1930s Del­vaux was com­mis­sioned large murals for the Ostend Casi­no and for the ‘Palais des Con­grès’ in Brus­sels, which earned him great respect. In 1956 Del­vaux rep­re­sent­ed Bel­gium at the 27th Venice Bien­nale where his scenes of the ‘Pas­sion of Christ’, pop­u­lat­ed with skele­tons, caused a scan­dal; in 1961, the ‘Musée des Beaux-Arts’ of Lille host­ed his first ret­ro­spec­tive ; in 1975, a large ret­ro­spec­tive was held in his hon­our at the Tokyo Nation­al Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. In 1982 the Paul Del­vaux Muse­um opened Saint-Ides­bald on the Bel­gian Coast. Del­vaux died in Saint-Ides­bald in 1994.